Cisco charts new path with Eos media platform

From InfoWorld: It's well-known that Cisco has been branching out from its core business of selling routers and switches, but in an open-plan office overlooking San Francisco's up-and-coming Mission Bay district, the networking monolith is venturing into areas that are ambitious even for one of technology's most aggressive acquisition machines.

A group that includes the assets of three acquired startups is in charge of a far-reaching product that puts the Cisco brand on social networking, Web hosting, content delivery and even aggregation of data about Web users' activity.

The Eos media platform, developed by the Cisco Media Solutions Group and introduced at the International Consumer Electronics Show in January, is a tool for media companies to build targeted Web sites for all their entertainment properties, merging content delivery with social networking. Company officials gave more details about the cloud-based service and its innovative business model at a media event at the San Francisco offices on Wednesday. Eos is designed to help media companies better leverage the movies, TV shows and musical artists they represent to attract fans and revenue.

Sites created with Eos can tap into content from anywhere across a large media company, according to Cisco. The sites can be customized to the various musical artists, TV shows, or movies, and include a wide range of Cisco-supplied components, such as forums, chat, and RSS feeds, as well as third-party elements integrated via APIs (application programming interfaces).

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